“Help me,” said I, “Hassan.”
“Be merciful,” said Hassan. “Kill him.”
“Help me,” I said.
“There is no hope,” said he.
“We have shared salt,” I said.
“I will help you,” said Hassan.
Using the dagger as an awl, punching through the flesh, and the long lacing from the lance head, while Hassan held together the edges of the ripped furrows, I crudely sewed together the rent, bloodied meat before me.
Once T’Zshal opened his eyes. “Let me die,” he begged.
“I thought you once made the march to Klima,” I said.
“I did,” said T’Zshal.
“March again to Klima,” I told him.
The fists of the kennel master clenched. A bit later he slept.
I leaned back from the body of T’Zshal. “You would not qualify as one of the caste of physicians,” said a man behind me.
“I myself,” said Hassan, “would not admit him to the leather workers.”
We laughed. T’Zshal slept.
“What of the Old One?” asked one of the men.
“Leave him,” I said. The lelts, as yet, had not even dared approach the shifting, buoyant carcass of the Old One. In time their hunger would bring them, nosing and nibbling, to its bulk, and the blind feast in the black waters would begin.
“Return to the salt docks,” I said.
The men picked up their poles. The great raft turned and began to make its way back toward the docks.
18
I Retrieve a Bit of Silk;
We Enter the Desert
“What would you have for saving my life?” asked T’Zshal.
“How is it,” I asked, “that this interview takes place in the domicile of the Salt Master?”
I stood on cool tiles, blue and yellow, in a vaulted room, in the keep of the Salt Master. I stood before a draped couch, on which lay T’Zshal. Guards were about. Near me stood Hassan.
“I am the Salt Master,” said T’Zshal. Men of the caste of physicians, slave, too, at Klima, stood about the couch. “What would you have?”
“My freedom,” said I, “and water.” I regarded T’Zshal. He lay upon the couch, stripped to the waist, not deigning to hide the fierce, sewn wounds which encircled his body.
“There are no kaiila at Klima,” said T’Zshal.
“I know,” I said.
“You would enter the desert afoot?” he asked.
“I have business away from Klima,” I said to him.
“You saved my life,” said T’Zshal. “In return, you ask only your own death?”
“No,” I said. “I ask freedom and water.”
“You do not know the desert,” he said.
“I will accompany him,” said Hassan. “I, too, ask freedom and water. I, too, have business away from Klima.”
“You know the desert?” asked T’Zshal.
“The desert is my mother, and my father,” said Hassan. It was a saying of the Tahari.
“And yet you would leave Klima afoot?”
“Furnish me kaiila,” said Hassan. “And I will not refuse them.”
“I could place both of you high at Klima,” said T’Zshal.
“Our business lies elsewhere,” I said.
“You are determined?” asked T’Zshal.
“Yes,” I said.
“I, too,” said Hassan.
“Very well,” said T’Zshal, “stake them out in the sun.”
We were seized from behind by guards. We struggled. “I saved your life!” I cried.
“Stake him out in the sun,” said T’Zshal.
“Sleen!” cried Hassan.
“He, too,” said T’Zshal.
* * * *
I pulled at the stake to which my right wrist was fastened.
“Lie still,” said the guard. I felt the point of his lance at my throat.
He retired to the canopy beneath which, with water, he sat, cross-legged, with his companion. Between them they had, in the crusts, scratched a board for Zar. This resembles the Kaissa board. Pieces, however, may be placed only on the intersections of lines either within or at the edges of the board. Each player has nine pieces of equal value which are originally placed on the intersections of the nine interior vertical lines with what would be the rear horizontal line, constituted by the back edge of the board, from each player’s point of view. The corners are not used in the original placement, though they constitute legitimate move points after play begins. The pieces are commonly pebbles, or bits of verr dung, and sticks. The “pebbles” move first. Pieces move one intersection at a time, unless jumping. One may jump either the opponent’s pieces or one’s own. A jump must be made to an unoccupied point. Multiple jumps are permissible. The object is to effect a complete exchange of original placements. The first player to fully occupy the opponent’s initial position wins. Capturing, of course, does not occur. The game is one of strategy and maneuverability.
“Hassan,” I said.
“Lie still,” he said. “Do not speak. Try to live.”
I was silent.
“Ah,” cried one of the guards. He had just made a move which pleased him.
I kept my eyes closed, that I be not blinded.
* * * *
I was cold.
I moved the stake, to which my right wrist was fastened, a quarter of an inch.
“Hassan,” I said. “Do you live?”
“Yes,” said he, from near me.
We had been staked out in the crusts.
The sun was now down.
Under the Tahari sun some men last as little as four hours, even those who have made the march to Klima.
Water had been nearby, but we had not been given any. We kept company with the stakes. One moves as little as possible. One must not sweat. Further, one shields, with one’s body, the surface on which one lies. The surface temperature can reach one hundred and seventy-five degrees by late afternoon.
Oddly, I was now cold. It was the Tahari night. I could see the stars, the three moons.
The two guards had now gone.
“By noon tomorrow, we shall be dead,” said Hassan.
I moved the stake again, to which my right wrist was fastened, another quarter of an inch. Then, slowly, bit by bit, I drew it from the crusts.
Hassan’s face was turned toward me.
“Do not speak,” I told him.
With the freed stake and my right hand, I rolled to my left and attacked the crusts about the stake that held my left wrist down. Then I had it free, and with my teeth and right hand, freed my left wrist of its impediment. Then I freed my ankles of the straps.
“Save yourself,” said Hassan. “I cannot walk.”
I freed him of the restraints at his wrists, then of those which held his ankles. To my right wrist, dangling, hung the stake I had first drawn from the crusts.
“Leave,” said Hassan. “I cannot walk!”
I bent down and lifted him to his feet. I supported him with my left arm about his waist. His right arm was about my shoulder.
We looked up.
About us, in a dark cloud, scimitars drawn, were more than a dozen men.
I seized the stake in my right fist, to do war with steel.
The men about us parted. I saw, among them, carried on a sedan chair, the figure of T’Zshal. The chair was placed before us.
“T’Zshal!” I cried.
He regarded us, under the moons.
“Are you still determined to enter the desert?” he asked.
“We are,” I said.
“Your water is ready,” he said.
Two men, with yoke bags, falling before their body, on each side, stepped forward.
“We sewed together several talu bags,” said T’Zshal, “to make these.”
I was stunned.
“I hoped,” said T’Zshal, “to teach you the sun and the lack of water, that you might be dissuaded from your madness.”
“You ha
ve well taught us, T’Zshal,” said I, “the lack of water and the meaning of the sun.”
He nodded his head. “You will now, at least with understanding,” said he, “enter the desert.” He turned to a guard. “Cut the stake from his wrist,” he said. It was done. Then he turned to another guard, one with a one-talu bag, who had been one of the men who had watched us, when we had been staked out. “Give them water,” he said.
“You did not let me struggle in the straps,” I said to the guard. “You saved the life of T’Zshal,” said the man. “I did not wish you to die.” Then he gave Hassan and me to drink from the water he carried.
Before we finished the bag, we passed it about the men, and T’Zshal, that each of us, there together, might have tasted it, the water from the same bag. We had, thus, in this act, shared water.
“You will, of course,” said T’Zshal, “remain at Klima for some days, to recover your strength.”
“We leave tonight,” I told him.
“What of him?” asked T’Zshal, indicating Hassan.
“I can walk,” said Hassan, straightening himself. “I now have water.”
“Yes,” said T’Zshal. “You are truly of the Tahari.”
A man handed me a bag of food. It contained dried fruit, biscuits, salt.
“My thanks,” I said. We had not expected food.
“It is nothing,” he said.
“Will you not,” I asked T’Zshal, “in your turn, when your wounds heal, march from Klima?”
“No,” said T’Zshal.
“Why?” I asked.
I have not forgotten the answer he gave me.
“I would rather be first at Klima than second in Tor,” he said.
“I wish you well,” said I, “T’Zshal, Salt Master of Klima.”
Hassan and I turned and, with the water, and our supplies, into the night desert, took our way.
We stopped outside the perimeter of Klima. From the place in the salt crusts, where I had hidden it, I took the faded, cracked bit of silk that had been thrust in my collar on the march to Klima. I held it to my face, and to the face of Hassan. “A trace of the perfume lingers,” he said.
“Perhaps I should give it to those of Klima,” I smiled.
“No,” smiled Hassan. “They would kill one another for it.”
But I had no wish to give it to any at Klima. Rather I wished to return it, personally, to a girl.
I tied the bit of silk about my left wrist.
Then together, under the Gorean moons, through the salt crusts, we began the trek from Klima.
We stopped once, on the height of the great shallow bowl which encloses Klima, to look back. We saw Klima white in the light of the three moons. Then we continued our journey.
19
The Wind Blows From the East;
We Encounter a Kur
I heard Hassan cry out.
Through the sand, I plunged toward him.
He stood on the side of a dune, in the moonlight. There was a flattish, large expanse of rock, exposed by the wind, below him.
“I saw it there!” he cried. “I saw it.” He pointed to the flattish extent of rock. The wind swept across it. I saw nothing.
“It is madness,” said Hassan. “There is nothing there. I am mad.”
“What did you see?” I asked.
“A beast,” he said. “A large beast. It stood suddenly upright. Its arms were long. It looked at me. Then it was gone.” He shook his head. “But it could not have been there. There is nowhere for it to have gone.”
“You describe a Kur,” I conjectured.
“I have heard of them,” said Hassan. “Are they not mythical, creatures of stories?”
“Kurii exist,” I said to him.
“No such beast could live in the desert,” said Hassan.
“No,” I said, “such a beast could not live in the desert.”
“Strange,” said Hassan, “that I should imagine a Kur here in the Tahari.”
I went to the rock, and examined it. I found no sign of a beast. The wind whipped the nearby sand. I could not discern footprints.
“Let us continue our trek,” said Hassan, “before we both go mad.”
Shouldering again the water, I followed Hassan.
* * * *
Yesterday we had finished the food. Yet did we have water. Hassan saw five birds overhead in flight.
“Fall to your hands and knees,” he said. “Put your head down.” He did so, and I followed his example. To my surprise the five birds began to circle. I looked up. They were wild vulos, tawny and broad-winged. In a short time they alighted, several yards from us. They watched us, their heads turned to one side. Hassan began to kiss rhythmically at the back of his hand, his head down, but moving so as to see the birds. The sound he made was not unlike that of an animal lapping water.
There was a squawk as he seized one of the birds which, curious, ventured too near. The other vulos took flight. Hassan broke the bird’s neck between his fingers and began to pull out the feathers.
We fed on meat.
* * * *
We had been twelve days on the desert, when I detected, suddenly, in a moving of the wind, the odor.
“Stop,” I said to Hassan. “Do you smell it?”
“What?” he asked.
“It is gone now,” I said.
“What was it that you smelled?” he asked.
“Kur,” I said.
He laughed. “You, too,” he said, “are mad.”
I scanned the dunes about us, silvered in the light of the moons. I shifted the water bag slung over my shoulders. Hassan stood nearby. He moved the bag of water he carried to his left shoulder, it falling before and behind.
“There is nothing,” he said. “Let us proceed.”
“It is with us,” I said. “You were not mistaken, days ago, when you saw it.”
“No Kur can live in the desert,” he said.
I looked about. “It is with us, somewhere, out there,” I said. “Somewhere.”
“Come,” said Hassan. “Soon it will be morning.”
“Very well,” I said to him.
“Why do you hesitate?” he asked.
I looked about. “We do not trek alone,” I told him. “There is another who treks with us.”
Hassan scanned the dunes. “I see nothing,” he said.
“We are not alone,” I told him. “Out there, somewhere, there is another, one who treks with us.”
We continued our march.
* * * *
The march of Hassan had as its object not Red Rock, northwest of Klima, but Four Palms, a Kavar outpost known to him, which lay far to the south of Red Rock. Unfortunately Four Palms was farther from Klima than Red Rock. On the other hand, his decision seemed to me a sound one. Red Rock was a Tashid oasis under the hegemony of the Aretai, enemies of the Kavars. Furthermore, between Klima and Red Rock lay the regions patrolled by the men of Abdul, the Salt Ubar, who had been known to me as Ibn Saran. Beyond this, though Four Palms lay farther from Klima than Red Rock, its route, it seemed, would bring one sooner out of the dune country than the route to Red Rock, and into the typical Tahari terrain of rock and scrub, where some game might be found, occasional water and possible nomadic groups not disposed to hostility toward Kavars. All things considered, the decision to attempt to reach Four Palms seemed the most rational decision in the circumstances. There was much risk, of course, attendant on either decision. We had no choice but to gamble. Hassan had gambled wisely; whether or not he had also gambled well would remain to be seen.
I followed Hassan, he orienting himself by the sun and the flights of certain birds, migrating. We had, of course, no instruments at our disposal, no marked trails, and we did not know the exact location of Klima with respect to either Red Rock or Four Palms.
We gambled. We continued to trek. The alternative to the gamble was not security but certain death.
A consequence of Hassan’s plan was that we were actually moving, generally, sout
h and west of Klima, in short, for a time, deeper into the most desolate, untraveled portions of the dune country, far even from the salt routes.
I realize now that this was why the beast was pacing us.
* * * *
“We have water,” I said to Hassan, “for only four more days.”
“Six,” he said. “We may live two days without water.”
We had come to the edge of the dune country. I looked out on the rugged hills, the cuts, the rocks, the brush.
“How far is it now?” I asked.
“I do not know,” said Hassan. “Perhaps five days, perhaps ten.” We did not know where we had emerged from the dunes.
“We have come far,” I said.
“Have you not noticed the wind?” said Hassan.
“No,” I said. I had not thought of it.
“From what direction does it come?” asked Hassan.
“From the east,” I said.
“It is spring,” said Hassan.
“Is this meaningful?” I asked. The wind felt much the same as the constant, whipping Tahari wind to me, no different, save for its direction.
We had been fourteen days on the desert when the wind had shifted to the east.
“Yes,” said Hassan. “It is meaningful.”
Two Ahn earlier the sun’s rim had thrust over the horizon, illuminating the crests of the thinning dunes. An Ahn earlier Hassan had said, “It is now time to dig the shelter trench.” On our hands and knees, with our hands, we dug in the parched earth. The trench was about four feet deep, narrow, not hard to dig. It is oriented in such a way that the passing sun bisects it. It affords shade in the morning and late afternoon; it is fully exposed only in the hours of high sun.
Hassan and I stood at the edge of the ditch, looking eastward. “Yes,” said Hassan. “It is meaningful.”
“I see nothing,” I said. Flecks of sand struck against my face.
“We had come so far,” said Hassan.
“Is there nothing we can do?” I asked.
“I will sleep,” said Hassan. “I am weary.”
I watched, while Hassan slept. It began in the east, like a tiny line on the margin of the desert. It was only as it approached that I understood it to be hundreds of feet in height, perhaps a hundred pasangs in width; the sky above it was gray, then black like smoke; then I could watch it no longer, that I might not be blinded; I shielded my eyes with my hands; I turned my back to it; I crouched in the ditch; the wind tore past above me; there was sand imbedded in the backs of my hands; in places, where I dislodged it, there was blood. I looked up. The sky was black with sand; brush, like startled, bounding tabuk, leaped, driven, over my head; the wind howled. I sat in the ditch. I put my head on my arms, my head down, my arms on my knees. I listened to the storm. Then I slept.
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